Thread: Body fat % while bulking

It's all in the diet and if you are bulking, don't expect abs anytime soon.

As far at BF%, it's very individual. Some men could get abs to show at 10% others not til 5%.

Ok so we have some type of nursing school a few floors above us. I went up a few minutes ago and had them measure my body fat. She basically just asked my age, height, weight (27, 6'0, 190) and had me grip this handheld device. It reported I had 16% body fat and was 30lbs over weight!! I called a buddy I occasionally work out with and he said those machines are inaccurate and that I should go with calipers. My question is how inaccurate? If it's pegging me at 16% what would be a more accurate number... higher or lower?

Thanks,
-Mike

Originally Posted by figit

Ok so we have some type of nursing school a few floors above us. I went up a few minutes ago and had them measure my body fat. She basically just asked my age, height, weight (27, 6'0, 190) and had me grip this handheld device. It reported I had 16% body fat and was 30lbs over weight!! I called a buddy I occasionally work out with and he said those machines are inaccurate and that I should go with calipers. My question is how inaccurate? If it's pegging me at 16% what would be a more accurate number... higher or lower?

Thanks,
-Mike

mike your buddy is right. Get someone to measure you with a caliper. 9 points, not 3 if possible. THe handheld device is B.S. and a lot of factors affect what the results turn out to be. You can take the test four times in a row with a few minutes of time in between each test and all your results may be different by a little or a lot.

Originally Posted by figit

Ok so we have some type of nursing school a few floors above us. I went up a few minutes ago and had them measure my body fat. She basically just asked my age, height, weight (27, 6'0, 190) and had me grip this handheld device. It reported I had 16% body fat and was 30lbs over weight!! I called a buddy I occasionally work out with and he said those machines are inaccurate and that I should go with calipers. My question is how inaccurate? If it's pegging me at 16% what would be a more accurate number... higher or lower?

Thanks,
-Mike

16% percent bodyfat is not overweight. I dont see how it could rate you being 30 pounds too heavy.

those things are very innacurate.... it more than doubled my actual BF when i used one, calipers are a good way to get an accurate measurement.

abs are not done through exercise really.... its good to work them of course and have strong abs, but they will only show with a lower bodyfat, like said before, below 10 generally..... mine showed a lot more at 5% than they do now at 7 so if you want abs, id recommend to cut, not bulk. you always gain fat on a bulk, its just unhealthy to only gain msucle on a bulk if you are at a low bf

Yeah thanks for the feedback guys, I've decided to stop bullking early to mid may in an effort to work on the abs. I've got a set of accumeasure calipers on the way, they should arrive in the next few days. I'll post the results, I'm anxious to see how innacurate that handheld device is. Oh, I included a 240 cap bottle of Cuts 2. It seemed to have the right ingredients and it was cheap (10 bones at bn). I plan to use redline along with this but has anyone had good results with Cuts 2?

Thanks again,
-Mike

First of all, 16% is really not fat. That's probably lower than most people. I personally have had pretty accurate results using one of those machines, but there may be big differences in different models, so there is really no way to tell how accurate they are.

Just because it said you are 30 pounds overweight doesn't mean anything. Those thirty pounds could be pure muscle, which is perfectly healthy to have... I'm on the brink of being "overweight" at about 10% bodyfat, so I wouldn't pay attention to weight. Many body builders are "overweight".

I usually cut down to approximately 9% bf, then bulk at maybe 12%? I don't usually measure my bf when I'm bulking, but I definately put on around 3-5 pounds of fat when I do. If I ate cleaner I probably wouldn't even have to put on this much weight. Hope this helps.

Off topic here, but how do they measure you with calipers? Are you supposed to strip down so that they can measure various points on your body or what?

if youre in to that kind of thing... but generally the genitals are not measured.